#!/usr/bin/perl -Tw
use strict;
use warnings;

my $skiphead = 1;
my $skipfoot = 2;
my $infile   = 'test.txt';
my $outfile  = '/tmp/out.txt';
my @buffer   = ();

open IN,  '<', $infile  or die "Cannot open $infile for reading: $!";
open OUT, '>', $outfile or die "Cannot open $outfile for writing: $!";

<IN> for (1..$skiphead);
push @buffer, scalar <IN> for (1..$skipfoot);
while (<IN>) { print OUT shift @buffer; push @buffer, $_; }

close OUT;
close IN;

##</code><code>##

$ cat test.txt
1 hello
2 there
3 this
4 is
5 a
6 good
7 test
$ ./headtail.pl
$ cat out.txt 
2 there
3 this
4 is
5 a